God Bless Troop C 3/4 Cavalry
25th.Infantry Division, for with out them Tan Son Nhut Air Base
would have been over run. I'm honored to have supported them at
The Battle For Tan Son Nhut Air Base January 31, 1968 Ed Lyons
Co. B 25th. Avn. Bn Diamond Head Gunship Door gunner.

Giap's buildup and staging of the Tet Offensive was a masterpiece of
deception. General instructions were sent to units in the field, but the
exact timing and specific unit objectives of the attacks were withheld
until the last moment. Starting in the fall of 1967, Giap staged a
series of bloody but seemingly pointless battles in the border regions
and in the north of the country near the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). On
October 29, the 273rd VC Regiment attacked the district capital of Loc
Ninh, in the "Fishhook" region northwest of Saigon. On November 23, the
4th NVA Regiment launched a major attack on Dak To. In early January
1968, several NVA divisions began to converge on the isolated U.S.
Marine outpost at Khe Sanh, in the northern ARVN I Corps Area, near the
DMZ.

All of these actions were part of
Giap's "peripheral campaign," designed to draw U.S. units out of the
urban areas and toward the borders. For the most part, they were
carried out by NVA troops, while VC units moved into their Tet
jump-off positions, built up their supplies and rehearsed. In the case
of the 273rd VC Regiment's attack at Loc Ninh, captured enemy
documents later revealed that the purpose of that battle had been to
give the Viet Cong experience in conventional attack formations. The
Communist military leadership used the 1967 Christmas cease-fire to
good advantage. Senior commanders used the truce to reconnoiter their
assigned objectives. On Christmas Day, Colonel Nam Truyen, commander
of the 9th VC Division, slipped into Saigon with forged papers
identifying him as a student returning home for the holiday. Once
inside the city, he made a thorough tour around the perimeter of Tan
Son Nhut Air Base, one of his primary targets. The Communist military
leadership used the 1967 Christmas cease-fire to good advantage.
Senior commanders used the truce to reconnoiter their assigned
objectives. On Christmas Day, Colonel Nam Truyen, commander of the 9th
VC Division, slipped into Saigon with forged papers identifying him as
a student returning home for the holiday. Once inside the city, he
made a thorough tour around the perimeter of Tan Son Nhut Air Base,
one of his primary targets.

By December 15, 1967, the U.S. command had turned over sole
responsibility for the defense of Saigon to the South Vietnamese
military, a gesture of confidence in the growing reliability of the
ARVN. The main task of securing Saigon was assigned to the 5th ARVN
Ranger Group, supported in turn by the 2nd Battalion, 13th Artillery,
the only U.S. combat unit remaining inside the city itself. Meanwhile,
39 maneuver battalions from the US. II Field Forces (an organization
essentially the same as a corps) were earmarked for a campaign against
the VC and NVA base camps near the Cambodian border. By the time of
Tet, only 14 US. and Free World maneuver battalions were scheduled to
be inside the so-called Saigon Circle, a 29-mile zone around the
capital. Lieutenant General Fredrick C. Weyand, commander of 11 Field
Forces, didn't like the pattern he was seeing. His troops in the
border regions were experiencing too few contacts, and enemy radio
traffic around Saigon was getting heavier. On January 10, 1968, Weyand
(a former intelligence officer and future chief of staff of the U.S.
Army) went to see his boss, General William C. Westmoreland, with his
concerns. He convinced Westmoreland to allow a shift of some of 11
Field Forces' combat power back inside the Saigon Circle. (When the
attacks did come, 27 maneuver battalions were back inside the Circle.
Weyand's call on Westmoreland may well have been the single most
decisive decision of the entire battle.) By late January, intelligence
estimates placed 20,000 to 40,000 NVA troops around Khe Sanh. General
Westmoreland was now convinced that the enemy would violate any Tet
truce. Still believing that the main enemy effort would be in the
north, he requested the US. and South Vietnamese governments to cancel
the cease-fire in the ARVN I Corps tactical zone. The initial blow
fell at Khe Sanh on January 21. From that point until the city attacks
erupted at Tet, the attention of the entire US. military and the
national command structure was riveted on the far-flung Marine
outpost. The press started making comparisons between Khe Sanh and
Dien Bien Phu; Khe Sanh became an obsession for President Johnson, who
had a scale model of the battlefield installed in the White House
Situation Room.

When the main attacks on the cities finally came, Giap's plan
didn't exactly go off without a hitch. The secrecy of his buildup cost
him something in coordination. At 12:15 on the morning of January 30,
Da Nang, Pleiku, Nha Trang and nine other cities in the center of
Vietnam came under attack. The assaults were premature-units in the
Viet Cong's Military Region 5 had jumped off one day too early.
General Westmoreland's intelligence chief, Brig. Gen. Phillip B.
Davidson, told him to expect the same thing country- wide by the next
day. At 9:45 that morning, the Allies canceled the Tet ceasefire for
the remainder of the country. At 11:25 all U.S. units were ordered to
full alert. The maneuver units inside the Saigon Circle were ordered
to take up blocking positions around Saigon and around the nearby Long
Bin-Bien Hoa military complex. An element of surprise had been lost.
At 1:30 in the morning on January 31, the presidential palace in
Saigon was attacked by a 14-man platoon from the Viet Cong's C-10
Sapper Battalion. By 3:40 a.m., Hue, far in the north, was under
attack. The Tet Offensive was in full swing. Before the day was over,
five of six autonomous cities, 36 of 44 provincial capitals, and 64 of
245 district capitals had been attacked. Except for Khe Sahn, Hue and
the Saigon Circle, however, the fighting was over in just a few days.
But even after the first full day of nationwide fighting, the Allied
command still didn't have a clear picture of what was happening. In a
press conference late on January 31, General Westmoreland was still
maintaining that the attacks on the cities and Saigon were diversions
for the main effort at Khe Sanh and the DMZ, instead of the other way
around

The Communist command had eight major objectives for the Saigon
Circle. With these objectives achieved, they believed, would come the
crippling of the Saigon government, and with that, the General
Uprising. A combined force of 35 battalions, organized into one NVA
and two VC divisions, was committed. Singularly or in combination, the
VC and NVA units were to seize and neutralize the key command, control
and communications centers inside Saigon; seize the artillery and
armor depots at Go Vap; and neutralize Tan Son Nhut Air Base and the
MACV command center. Further, they would seize the Cholon section of
Saigon; destroy the Newport Bridge linking Saigon to Long Bin-Bien Hoa
on Highway 1; seize the massive U.S. logistics center at Long Binh;
neutralize the U.S. air base at Bien Hoa; and neutralize the 11 Field
Forces and III ARVN Corps command centers. Finally, they were to block
any attempts by the U.S. 25th Infantry Division
to reinforce Saigon from Chu Chi along
Highway I and block any attempts by the U.S. 1st
Infantry Division to reinforce Saigon from Lai Khe along
Highway 13.

During the early hours of January 31, General Weyand sat in
his Tactical-Operations Center (TOC) at Long Binh, watching the battle
sites on his operations map light up "like a pinball machine:' Between
3 a.m. and 5 a.m., he ordered the nearly 5,000 American combat troops
under his immediate control into action. Later that morning, he
ordered his deputy commander, Maj. Gen. Keith Ware, into Saigon to
take command of all the U.S. forces Weyand was sending into the city.
As a battalion commander in World War II, General Ware had received
the Medal of Honor. A few months after Tet, he would assume command of
the 1st Infantry Division, the "Big Red One," only to die shortly
thereafter in a helicopter crash. Elsewhere in the city, another
platoon of the C-10 Battalion hit gate No. 5 of the ARVN Joint General
Staff (JGS) compound at 2 a.m. The first attack was driven back, and
the 1st and 2nd VC Local Force battalions were brought up to continue
the assault. At 4 a.m. a truckload of American MPs from the 716th MP
Battalion was racing to answer a trouble call from an American
officers' billet near JGS headquarters. The MPs were ambushed in an
alley by a VC company on its way to the same JGS compound. The
resultant fight in the alley lasted 12 hours. Sixteen American MPs
were killed and 21 were wounded. Meanwhile, other VC forces managed to
get inside the JGS compound about 9:30 a.m., but they were quickly
ejected and routed by a reaction force of ARVN paratroopers. A few
blocks north of the U.S. Embassy, yet another platoon of the
ubiquitous C-10 Battalion hit the National Radio station. The station
had been reinforced during the night by a platoon of ARVN
paratroopers, almost all of whom were soundly asleep on the station
roof when the attack started. The sappers took up positions in an
adjacent apartment building where they could fire down on the ARVN
soldiers. After killing all the paratroopers, the sappers had little
difficulty taking over the station. They were accompanied by an NVA
radio specialist who carried prerecorded broadcast tapes announcing
the fall of the Saigon government and the so-called General Uprising.
Their plans fell apart at the last moment, however, when the night
crew at the transmission site 14 miles away shut down the link on a
prearranged signal. The ARVN depot complex at Go Vap, on the northern
edge of the city, was the primary objective of the 101st VC Regiment.
The plan called for the capture of ARVN tanks from the Phu Dong
Armored Headquarters and howitzers from the Co Lao Artillery
Headquarters. These heavy weapons were then to be used to assault the
east end of Tan Son Nhut Air Base, about one mile away. Troops
specially trained to operate the weapons accompanied the attack
forces. Both assaults were successful, but once inside Phu Dong, the
VC discovered that the tanks had been moved elsewhere two months
prior. At Co Lao, the VC managed to capture 12 105mm howitzers, but
the weapons were disabled at the last minute when the withdrawing ARVN
troops had the presence of mind to remove the firing locks. A few
hours later, the Go Vap complex was retaken by the 4th Vietnamese
Marine Corps Battalion.

The following day, just north of the city, the US. 1st
Infantry Division turned the tables on the force that was supposed to
block the Big Red One from reinforcing Saigon. Moving southeast along
Highway 13, the Americans ran into the 273rd VC Regiment, the same
unit that had hit the district capital of Loc
Ninh the previous October. The VC took up defensive positions
near Phu Loi but were caught there by the division's artillery and
sealed in the box by the infantry. Two days and 3,493 artillery rounds
later, the 273rd had, been virtually destroyed as an effective
fighting unit. During the evening of January 30, a large VC force
infiltrated the Vinatexco textile factory across Highway I from Tan Son Nhut. At about 3:20 the next
morning, three VC battalions (the D16, the 267th and a battalion from
the 271st VC Regiment) stormed the western side of the air base, which
also housed the command for MACV. Secondary attacks were also launched
against the north and east gates. Even though the armor and artillery
that were supposed to come from Go Vap never arrived, the western
perimeter was breached and the Communist forces made it onto the
runway. The base was defended by an oddly assorted reaction force
consisting of the 377th Security Police Squadron, two platoons of MACV
headquarters' guard force, the ARVN 52nd Regional Force Battalion, and
Vice-President Nguyen Cao Ky's bodyguard. The base's only reserve
consisted of two companies from the ARVN 8th Airborne Battalion, men
who had been sitting in the Tan Son Nhut terminal awaiting air
transport north, where they had been ordered to reinforce the DMZ. By
4:15 a.m. this reserve had been committedattackers and defenders were
fighting hand-to-hand on the western end of the
runway.------------------ Calls for help
went out to the U.S. 25th Infantry Division at Cu Chi, about 15 miles
northwest of Saigon. The Troop C
3rd Squadron, 4th Cavalry
of theU.S. 25th Infantry Division ,
had already been alerted for a possible relief mission to Tan Son Nhut. When the call came through,
the squadron commander, Lt. Col. Glenn K. Otis, was ordered to immediately commit his Troop C. As the
armored cavalry troop, under the command of Captain Leo B. Virant,
raced down Highway I in the dark, Otis flew overhead in his
command-and-control helicopter, harassing Viet Cong ambush sites from
the air and guiding the troops around the danger zones by means of
flares dropped nearby. One platoon of Troop C
was left to secure the Hoc Mon Bridge, just north of the base. Colonel
Otis then returned to Cu Chi to rearm and refuel, and the rest of
Troop C crashed into the rear of the three VC battalions at about 6
a.m. The VC responded with rocket-propelled grenades (RPG). About
one-third of the armored column was destroyed and Captain Virant was
seriously wounded, but the cohesion of the VC attack was badly
disrupted. American troopers from the destroyed vehicles were fighting
from the ditch alongside the highway and rapidly running out of
ammunition. Unable to establish contact with Allied forces inside the
base, Troop C radioed back to Cu Chi for help.
Colonel Otis got the call and immediately headed back for Tan Son Nhut. The platoon guarding the
Hoc Mon Bridge was committed first and arrived at 7:15 a.m. Otis then
called in his air cavalry troop. Ammo was brought in by air, and the
wounded were evacuated. Otis directed the air
troop's gunships against the attackers.

Troop B was then called in from its alert position about 30
miles away. It raced down Highway I and reached Tan Son Nhut in
about 45 minutes. Otis positioned the new arrivals across the
enemy's north flank, effectively putting the VC in a right angle
between two armored columns. More gunships and artillery pounded the
enemy, now firmly fixed in the "L." By 10 a.m., the VC attack
folded. Many Viet Cong fled back into the textile mill, which was
later leveled by air strikes. Around the base perimeter, mop-up
operations continued well into the night. The
3rd Squadron, 4th Cavalry, was later awarded the Presidential Unit
Citation for the fight. Four members of the squadron,
including Otis, received the Distinguished Service Cross. Twenty
years after the fight at Tan Son Nhut, Glenn K. Otis retired from
the Army as the four-star general in command of the U.S. Army in
Europe.

Thirteen miles to the east,
the Long Binh-Bien Hoa complex was
simultaneously attacked by the 5th VC Division. There, too, the battle
was decided by armored and mechanized forces. The previous night, the 9th Division's 2nd Battalion, 47th Infantry
(Mechanized), under the command of Lt. Col. John B. Tower, had
moved into alert positions outside the cities ties. At 4:45 on the
morning of the thirty-first, General Weyand ordered the battalion
forward. Company A was sent to relieve the
attack on a large Allied POW compound maintained between the two
cities on Highway 1. Company B was sent to reinforce the already
breached perimeter of the Long Binh ammo dump. Company C, commanded by
Captain John Gross, was sent to relieve the attack on the ARVN III
Corps headquarters in Bien Hoa City. Company B arrived at the ammo
dump at 6:30, a.m. Some of the soldiers joined in the fight to eject
the intruders, while others helped ordnance personnel remove and
disarm satchel charges already placed in many bunkers by VC sappers.
Company A, meanwhile, attacked from the Long Binh base across Highway
I into elements of the 275th VC Regiment in Ho Nai Village and "Black
Widow Village"--so called by U.S. troops because many widows of VC
officers were thought to live there. To reach the ARVN III Corps
headquarters, Company C had to fight its way through the middle of the
275th VC Regiment astride Highway I and through the flank of the 274th
VC Regiment attacking Bien Hoa Air Base. At 5:45 a.m., it plowed into
the rear of the 238th VC Battalion attacking the III Corps compound.
Company C attacked from the march column and overran the besieged ARVN
position. Company C continued to fan out from the III Corps compound,
fighting house to house through the city. After months of jungle
fighting, the men of Company C suddenly found themselves engaged in
World War II-style city fighting. As disorienting as the abrupt change
was for the Americans, they adapted to it much faster than their
enemy. M79 grenade launchers were used with deadly effect against VC
riflemen firing from the upper stories of buildings. When Bien Hoa
City was finally cleared by 5:30 that evening, Company C had taken
only eight walking wounded. One of the company's several pet dogs was
also wounded when an RPG hit an M113 armored personnel carrier (APC).
The troops later obtained a "Purple Heart" for the dog. (Company C had
more than its share of dog lovers.) While Company C fought to secure
Bien Hoa City, Troop A of the 9th Division's 3rd Squadron, 5th
Cavalry, was sent to relieve the attack on Bien Hoa Air Base. The
troop, commanded by Captain Ralph B. Garretson, had to move 18 miles
down Highway I and run the same gantlet as Company C. At the town of
Trang Bom, Troop A was hit by a company-size ambush, but just rolled
right through it, the men firing as they went. Ten miles from Bien Hoa,
they were momentarily stopped cold when the VC blew a highway bridge
after Troop A's first tank rolled across. The troop's M113s could ford
the stream, but the tanks could not. After a hasty fording operation,
Troop A was once again on the move, but with only one of its

Troop A reached the air
base and linked up with the 101st Airborne
Division's 2nd Battalion, 506th Infantry, which had been
brought in by helicopter at dawn. Together they ejected the attackers
from the eastern end of the field. The fight took most of the day.
Troop A lost two more APCs. Its lone tank took 19 hits and lost two
crews, but was still operational when the battle was over. The fight
for Long Binh-Bien Hoa ended on the evening of February I with the
arrival of the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment,
after an eight-hour forced march from War Zone C. The 2nd of the 47th
Infantry and Troop A of the 3rd of the 5th Cavalry were later awarded
Valorous Unit Citations. The teeming Chinese section of Cholon,
in the southwest corner of Saigon, was the Communists' key population
objective inside the Saigon Circle. Initially, the area was attacked
by the 5th and 6th VC Local Force Battalions. As the fighting dragged
on into days-and then into weeks-elements of every Communist unit
known to be operating in Saigon were eventually identified there.

The key to Cholon was the Phu Tho
Racetrack. It was at the hub of most of the key streets in the area
and, by holding it, the VC could deny its use as a landing zone.
Early on the thirty-first, General Weyand ordered Brig. Gen. Robert
C. Forbes, commanding general of the 199th
Light Infantry Brigade, to send some of his troops to
reinforce ARVN rangers in Cholon. The elements from the 199th had to
be shifted from their defensive positions at Long Binh, making the
huge logistics complex just that much more vulnerable.The 6th VC LF
Battalion had little trouble taking the racetrack. From there, a
large number of Communist political cadres fanned out to work
through the huge urban sprawl. Some tried to whip up support for the
General Uprising. Others went to serve arrest and execution warrants
on government figures and ARVN officers in the area. A month-long
reign of terror in Cholon had begun.

Company A, 3rd Battalion, 7th Infantry, and the 199th's
reconnaissance troop reached Cholon about 8 a.m. that morning
(January 31). Six blocks from the racetrack, an RPG hit the lead
APC in the column, killing the platoon leader. Communist troops
began to fire down onto the column from the surrounding buildings.
The infantry dismounted and continued fighting house to house,
exactly as their colleagues in the 2nd Squadron of the 47th were
doing in Bien Hoa at that very moment. By 1 p.m. Company A had
pushed to within two blocks of the racetrack. The VC then withdrew
to prepared positions behind the concrete benches at the track.
Company A assaulted the position, but was repulsed. At 4:30 it
tried again, this time supported by helicopter Gunships. The
Americans succeeded in taking the track, but the VC troops melted
away into the streets of Cholon. Shortly after dark, Companies B
and C of the 3rd of the 7th were brought onto the racetrack by
helicopter. The next morning, the troops at the racetrack were
reinforced by two mechanized companies (B and C) of the 9th Division's 2nd Battalion, 60th Infantry,
and the 33rd ARVN Ranger Battalion. Using the racetrack as a base
of operations, they started working outward to clear Cholon. The
VC tried to retake the racetrack later that day, but were beaten
back.